The present invention relates, generally, to systems for determination of nutritional parameters in food items, and, specifically, to a system and method for non-destructive dynamic determination of nutritional parameters.
Intake of right amount of nutritional parameters from food, along with regular workouts, is of paramount importance in maintaining one's health. Nutritional parameters such as calorie content, protein content, carbohydrate content, mineral contents are important to develop a healthy and balanced diet for an individual. Especially to maintain a person's weight, calorie intake and calorie burning must be properly balanced. The amount of calories burnt is dependent on a person's exercise regimen and/or the amount of physical and mental stress she undergoes every day. To be able to maintain one's weight, the amount of calories burnt by one in a day should be proportional to the amount of calories consumed in the day.
Hence, it becomes important to know calorie content of food items before they are consumed. While most packed food items have calorie content information printed on the packaging, it has also been observed that calorie content of packed food items changes when they are mixed with other food items. Moreover, calorie content of food items such as meat, milk, vegetables varies depending on a portion of the food item being consumed. There is hence a need for a system for dynamic measurement of calorie content when food items are being cooked, or when they are being stored, or when they are being kept in containers for consumption.
Current systems for determination of nutritional parameters of food items include placing a food item in a sampling station and exposing the food item to microwaves. However, such systems require that the sampling station is filled completely with the food item. Owing to difference in size and shape of food items, it is not always feasible to fill the same sampling station completely with different kind of food items. For effective usage of such systems different sampling stations are required thus increasing the cost of utilization of the systems. Moreover, these systems cannot be utilized for food items that include more than one ingredient. To measure the nutritional parameters of food items that include more than one ingredient, in current systems, each ingredient must be separated and measured in the sampling station.
The problem pertaining to non-destructive determination of nutritional parameters is solved by placing parameter detection sensors in a holding cavity. To further reduce the space requirements of systems for determination of nutritional parameters, the sensors are placed in already existing devices, such as microwave ovens or electric heaters, which have a cavity defined in them. However, metallic bodies of the sensors may lead to arcing problems when the microwave oven is being used for cooking the food items. Arcing in microwave ovens has known to cause serious damage to microwave ovens.
Hence, there is a need for a system and method that allows for non-destructive measurement of nutritional parameters of the food item without leading to arcing in the microwave ovens.